News

ARRI Event Lights Up Western Australia

05/12/2017

AUS: ARRI Australia recently took a range of their lighting products, including some never seen before in Western Australia, to the Johnny Marr Studio in Perth for an evening with the state's top cinematographers, gaffers and lighting experts.

ARRI Australia Sales Manager Sean Dooley said: "We had about 30 attendees from the ACS WA branch as well as some gaffers and film school representatives. After about an hour of playtime I gave a presentation on the difference between the S30-C, S60-C, S120-C and the brand new S360-C SkyPanels. In fact this was the first and only time the S360-C has been shown in Australia."

ARRI's SkyPanel is a compact, ultra-bright and high-quality LED soft light that sets a high standard for the industry. With a design focused on form, colour, beam field and output, SkyPanel represents the culmination of more than a decade of research and development of LED technology at ARRI, something Dooley was keen to elaborate on.

He continued: "We talked about LED colour accuracy, energy efficiency and options for selecting colours. As part of the presentation I demonstrated the multitude of control options for the new fixtures: the control panel on the rear of the fixture, USB remote, DMX Master/Slave Mode, new wireless DMX through the SkyLink and over Ethernet using SACN or ArtNet."

This Ethernet connection enabled Dooley to demo a piece of software called MadMapper which uses pixel mapping to allow a user to animate a group of SkyPanels by sampling a video. He added: "The software allows a user to select a group of pixels in a video source from which colour is sampled and then sent via DMX commands to the fixtures. In the past, animating repeatable lighting effects would have taken a specialist DMX board operator hours to accomplish with a huge array of equipment."

The S60-C and the new S360-C panels were of particular interest to the audience as Dooley explained, "The S60-C was well received as a very flexible, fully tuneable fixture from 2,800K to 10,000K that is brighter than a 2000W tungsten soft light despite only drawing 400W. The S360-C was the real star of the show, brighter than three 12kW tungsten space lights while only drawing 1500W and running off a normal circuit. As well as its efficiency the attendees also delighted in the fact that it shares the same colour modes and lighting effects as the other SkyPanels but on a huge, soft aperture. All of that plus its built-in wireless DMX and unique carbon fibre yoke made the S360-C their choice as the cutting-edge flagship product in the LED market."

With Stuart Harrington from ARRI lighting reseller Barbizon also giving a presentation on the different accessories for the SkyPanel, sharing his experience of how the fixtures are being used across the country and facilitating a hands on session with the panels on the night, according to Dooley the event was deemed a great success.

He concluded: "The attendees thanked us for an interesting and informative evening. It was also lots of fun and you can rest assured we will be back in WA with more products for the film and TV industry to play with soon."